


'Things Sometimes Turn, Instead of Turn Out'

by Fenix21



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Brother Feels, Deathfic, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt!Sam, Season Eight AU, Songfic, Trials, what if season 8 were the last
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-01
Updated: 2016-09-01
Packaged: 2018-08-12 08:31:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7927906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fenix21/pseuds/Fenix21
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>He drove past all the exits and on-ramps, east, where the sun was pulling itself up a horizon made smoky by the thousand falling stars with flaming wings the night before.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	'Things Sometimes Turn, Instead of Turn Out'

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from the song 'Begin' by the Wailing Jennys. The moment I heard this song, this idea popped into my head, and it's been stewing for over a year. I heard this song again this morning, and decided it was getting done, so here it is.
> 
> Also, we can blame [Linden](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Linden/pseuds/Linden) because she posted [THIS](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7920589) that damn near broke my heart irreparably, so I had to do something in response.

‘Keep driving,’ Sam rasped.

‘We’ve got to get you to a hospital, Sammy.’ Dean’s eyes were shifting between the road and his brother’s pale, hunched form in the seat beside him every few seconds. If he'd been bleeding out, Dean thought, it might have been easier. There would be a wound to dress, somewhere to apply pressure, something he could _do_ to keep his little brother’s life from ebbing away.

‘No.’ Sam’s voice was nothing more than a thin thread of sound now. ‘Just drive.’ He laid his head back against the seat and closed his eyes and his face went slack.

Too accustomed now to the grimace of pain on Sam’s features, Dean’s heart tumbled over itself in panic, and his hand shot out to splay wide across his chest, directly over his heart. ‘Sammy!’ Sam lifted his hand to cover Dean’s for a moment before it drifted back to his lap like he didn't have the energy anymore to hold it up.

‘Sam, you stay with me,’ Dean commanded. His voice was fierce as if, by dint of anger alone, he could rile Sam into staying conscious, staying alive. ‘You hear me? You stay with me.’

Sam said nothing, didn't open his eyes, just let out a long breath that sounded too much like a relieved sigh of surrender. Dean pressed his hand harder against Sam’s chest, held his breath between one slow beat of his brother’s heart and the next. The kid’s body was giving up, ravaged inside and out by whatever power it had tapped during the Trials, burned clean and hollowed out.

‘Sammy…’

Sam tipped sideways in the seat, pressed his cheek to Dean’s shoulder. Dean shifted his hand to keep it over Sam’s heart, to hang onto the painful, slow rhythm, feeling like his own might stop each time it took a moment too long to find its next beat.

‘Drive, Dean,’ Sam breathed out.

‘…yeah. Yeah, I will. You just…hang on, little brother.’

And Dean drove.

He drove past all the exits and on-ramps, east, where the sun was pulling itself up a horizon made smoky by the thousand falling stars with flaming wings the night before. He drove until Sam’s body grew heavy against his side and the beating beneath his hand became so slow and faded he had to imagine it into being.

He kept driving until the wind dried the tears on his cheeks, until the sun burned his vision white and then dipped below the edge of the world again; until the stars gleamed bright and clearer than he ever recalled before, and he thought he saw, like a mirage on the desert, a clearing of tall grass at the end of the road, spreading out into the curve of the night. There was the smell of gunpowder and magnesium in this nose, and like a memory coming closer, he heard a voice call,

‘C’mon, Dean! Light ‘em up!’


End file.
